Related papers: Critical and Non-Critical Einstein-Weyl Supergravi…
Higher-order curvature corrections involving the conformally-invariant Weyl-squared action have played a role in two recent investigations of four-dimensional gravity; in critical gravity, where it is added to the standard cosmological…
In this paper we study the spectrum of all conformal, ${\cal N}$-extended supergravities (${\cal N}=1,2,3,4$) in four space-time dimensions. When these theories are obtained as massless limit of Einstein plus Weyl$^2$supergravity, the…
We study four-dimensional gravity theories that are rendered renormalisable by the inclusion of curvature-squared terms to the usual Einstein action with cosmological constant. By choosing the parameters appropriately, the massive scalar…
In these lectures we discuss N-extended conformal supergravity and its spectrum in four dimensions. These theories can be considered as the massless limit of Einstein-Weyl supergravity and by taking into account their enhanced gauge…
We show that a critical condition exists in four dimensional scale invariant gravity given by the pure quadratic action $\beta \,C_{\mu\nu\sigma\rho} C^{\mu\nu\sigma \rho} + \alpha \,R^2$ where $C^{\mu}_{\,\,\nu \sigma \rho}$ is the Weyl…
We explore four-dimensional Einstein-Weyl gravity and supergravity on anti-de Sitter spacetime. For a specific range of the coupling with appropriate boundary conditions, we show the effective equivalence of the theory with Einstein gravity…
We discuss the connection between Weyl$^2$ supergravity and superstrings and further discuss holography between 4-dimensional, ${\cal N}=4$ superconformal Weyl$^2$ supergravity and ${\cal N}=8$, higher spin-four theory on $AdS_5$. The…
In the context of perturbative quantum field theory, the addition of quadratic-curvature invariants to the Einstein-Hilbert action makes it possible to achieve strict renormalizability in four dimensions. The additional terms $R^2$ and…
We point out a new phenomenon which seems to be generic in 4d effective theories of scalar fields coupled to Einstein gravity, when applied to cosmology. A lift of such theories to a Weyl-invariant extension allows one to define classical…
Basics of ${\cal N}=2, 4D$ conformal and Einstein supergravities in the harmonic superspace approach are outlined. The crucial merit of this formulation consists in that the relevant off-shell supermultiplets, in particular ${\cal N}=2, 4D$…
General Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet gravity with a cosmological constant allows two (A)dS spacetimes as its vacuum solutions. We find a critical point in the parameter space where the two (A)dS spacetimes coalesce into one and the linearized…
We show that, in four-dimensional spacetimes with an arbitrary Einstein metric, with and without a cosmological constant, perturbative dynamical degrees of freedom in generic quadratic-curvature gravity can be decoupled into massless and…
Supersymmetric higher derivative gravities define superconformal field theories via the AdS/CFT correspondence. From the boundary theory viewpoint, supersymmetry implies a relation between the coefficients which determine the three point…
We study structure of solutions of the recently constructed minimal extensions of Einstein's gravity in four dimensions at the quartic curvature level. The extended higher derivative theory, just like Einstein's gravity, has only a massless…
In this paper, two things are done. (i) Using cohomological techniques, we explore the consistent deformations of linearized conformal gravity in 4 dimensions. We show that the only possibility involving no more than 4 derivatives of the…
We study the parameter space of D-dimensional cosmological Einstein gravity together with quadratic curvature terms. In D>4 there are in general two distinct (anti)-de Sitter vacua. We show that for appropriate choice of the parameters…
We construct a generalized massive gravity by combining quadratic curvature gravity with the Chern-Simons term in four dimensions. This may be a candidate for the parity-odd tricritical gravity theory. Considering the AdS$_4$ vacuum…
We consider higher dimensional gravity in which the four dimensional spacetime and extra dimensions are not treated on an equal footing. The anisotropy is implemented in the ADM decomposition of higher dimensional metric by requiring the…
We describe the construction of $2+1$-dimensional toplogically massive adS gravity with ${\mathcal{N}}$-extended supersymmetry in superspace by means of introducing a compensating hypermultiplet for the super-Weyl invariance. For…
Criticality represents a specific point in the parameter space of a higher-derivative gravity theory, where the linearized field equations become degenerate. In 4D Critical Gravity, the Lagrangian contains a Weyl-squared term, which does…